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Published September 9, 2020 | Supplemental Material + Submitted
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Feature-based encoding of face identity by single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe

Abstract

Neurons in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) that are selective for the identity of specific people are classically thought to encode identity invariant to visual features. However, it remains largely unknown how visual information from higher visual cortex is translated into a semantic representation of an individual person. Here, we show that some MTL neurons are selective to multiple different face identities on the basis of shared features that form clusters in the representation of a deep neural network trained to recognize faces. Contrary to prevailing views, we find that these neurons represent an individual's face with feature-based encoding, rather than through association with concepts. The response of feature neurons did not depend on face identity nor face familiarity, and the region of feature space to which they are tuned predicted their response to new face stimuli. Our results provide critical evidence bridging the perception-driven representation of facial features in the higher visual cortex and the memory-driven representation of semantics in the MTL, which may form the basis for declarative memory.

Additional Information

The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Posted September 02, 2020. We thank all patients for their participation, staff from WVU Ruby Memorial Hospital for support with patient testing, Minglei Yin for help on analysis, Jeremy Dawson for contributing the FBI Twins dataset, and Ralph Adolphs, Carlos Ponce, and Paula Webster for discussion and valuable comments. This research was supported by an NSF CAREER Award (1945230), ORAU Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, West Virginia University (WVU), WVU PSCoR Program, and the Dana Foundation (to S.W.), and an NSF Grant (OAC-1839909) and the WV Higher Education Policy Commission Grant (HEPC.dsr.18.5) (to X.L.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Author Contributions: R.C., A.T., X.L., and S.W. designed research. R.C. and S.W. performed experiments. N.B. performed surgery. R.C., J.W., C.L., X.L. and S.W. analyzed data. R.C, U.R., A.T., X.L., and S.W. wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and contributed toward the manuscript. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Submitted - 2020.09.01.278283v1.full.pdf

Supplemental Material - media-1.pdf

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Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 20, 2023